One of Australia’s biggest telecommunication companies, Telstra Corp LTD, admitted that it had experienced a minor data breach incident last week. The breach occurred a couple of weeks after its main competitor Optus disclosed its cybercriminal incident.
Today, Telstra has more than 18 million customer accounts which can be translated to 75% of Australia’s current population. Based on reports, a data breach incident exposed several employees’ data on the internet. The firm also claimed that the oldest exposed data was in 2017.
According to Australian local media reports, a Telstra internal staff email set the number of present and former employees at 30,000. The company classified the exposed data as basic information since it only included the names and email addresses of the employees.
A Telstra representative claimed that the hackers want to make more profits by attacking them since their rival company was also attacked by threat actors recently.
The Telstra spokesperson revealed that the data leak was made available since the threat actors think they could also profit from their company since a massive cyberattack recently hit Optus.
The telecom company did not officially state how many people were affected by the data breach. However, they insisted that the breach exclusively affected the current and former staff.
The recent attacks against several entities have prompted Australian companies to be on their toes. Telecoms, government, and financial sectors of the country have been on red alert since Optus admitted that their systems were breached last September, affecting approximately 10 million individuals.
The Australian government said Optus insists that a fundamental security flaw caused the data breach, but it has continued to compromise the company. Hence, many cybersecurity experts believe it is a sophisticated attack that delayed the affected customers.
Australian government service Minister said Optus’ management should consider admitting the actual cause of the breach since the attack has shown complexity and sophistication.
As of now, Optus has declined to comment regarding the government’s allegations but assured every impacted individual that their company is working tirelessly to give updates to everyone.
